Wednesday, February 4, 2015

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Good

At the 7:30 am meeting of House Counties, Cities and
Towns Subcommittee #1, Delegate Hugo’s HB1744, giving local school boards the
option to employ three person panels rather than hearing offices for teacher
dismissal hearings, reported.The bill
was amended to remove the section relating to police and other local government
employees.Delegate Bob Marshall made
the motion to report.At his point the
official vote of the subcommittee has not been posted.The bill will be before the full Counties,
Cities and Towns Committee on Friday morning.

Delegate Dickie Bell’s HB1306, which would have required “each eleventh grade student to achieve a passing score on
the civics portion of the U.S. Naturalization Test based on the current scoring
guidelines adopted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services” to receive a
diploma, failed to report from the House Education Committee on a 8-14 vote.

Senator Janet Howell’s SJR218, which “requests the Department of Education to study the
feasibility of implementing a program in the Commonwealth to track teacher
turnover by developing exit questionnaires and other means” was reported from
the Senate Finance Committee on a 14-0 vote.

BAD

Delegate Tag Greasons HB1550, which would have eliminated
the post-Labor Day opening requirement died on a tie vote in the House
Education Committee.

UGLY

Senator Obenshain’s SJR256, an amendment to the Constitution
of Virginia to transfer charter granting authority from local school boards to
the Board of Education passed on a 21-17 straight party-line vote. The official vote is not yet posted as I write.To be place of the ballot for consideration by the
voters, the identical language has to pass in a subsequent session (2016).Should it pass, this constitution amendment
will open the door to corporate charters and forcing localities that have no
desire to open charter schools to open them.